Case study: How I designed a wellness retreat booking platform
Introduction
When I got into corporate life, the biggest downfall for me while working was my health and I was stressed out all the time even after office hours. I always treated my body like a temple but things got changed.
Being a traveler and fitness enthusiast, I was always in search of experiencing something new in life. I always thought of what it is to be on vacation where I can not just enjoy but also do something different like yoga, meditation, and being a part of some spiritual wellness groups where I can meet new people with a new culture because sometimes a change is better instead of the same things going on in our life. It was like being on a spiritual journey to rejuvenate and recharge our minds and body.
“No one can not guarantee that going out for a trip will give you peace because there’s always a thought in one’s mind that again same schedule is waiting ahead for us after coming back.”
I sound too philosophical. I know right? But bear with me for a while. All of this will start making sense to you in a little while.
The Challenge
In the world of digitization where we do everything on our smartphones from a single phone call to playing games, booking tickets, and lots of countless activities. One day in curiosity I also immediately grabbed my smartphone and opened the play store to search for some spiritual and wellness retreats because I was planning to go into one after the pandemic.
🚨 “I didn’t find a single application on app stores where I can look for the wellness retreat and a different kind of vacation which I was hoping to go for.”
I was so surprised to see this there was not even one application. Isn’t it shocking!! We are in the 21st century where mental illness accounts for 30 percent of the non-fatal disease burden and 10 percent of the overall disease burden worldwide, including death and disability shown in the recent data released by WHO.
Why no one has thought of creating something like that, WHY? Isn’t this a profitable business or there are no yoga lovers left in this modern world. I took this thing as a challenge to conduct thorough research on this domain and provide a solution if found this idea viable.
Questions that started popping in my head:
- What kind of wellness retreat a user will look for?
- How I am going to provide affordable options?
- Will, there be anyone interested or he/she just will ignore it of thinking it is a basic travel app?
- How I am going to design a booking process with a seamless user experience.
- How I can build user’s confidence that this is going to help you not just enjoy your vacation but will truly help you to rejuvenate your soul?
At this point, I was in so much confusion about how this is going to end but then I asked myself:
“What if the experience of booking a wellness retreat could be as enjoyable as doing asanas to relax our mind?”
This is how I started…
Project Goal
The main goal is to provide a platform where one can easily find a wellness retreat, look for services with a simple booking process with a seamless user experience, and enjoy the new way of traveling.
Grounded in research, and the creation of wellness retreat mobile application for the user. So three things came to my mind while thinking like a user in short i.e. Look, Book & Enjoy.
My goals as a UX Designer of this application:
- Easy & hassle-free booking process
- Help users to find wellness retreats near them according to their taste.
“Wellness Retreats are all about rejuvenating one’s mind and body and the experience starts with the booking phase.”
Target Audience
- People who love to explore new ways of traveling.
- Those who love yoga and meditation and looking for something like a yoga vacation or a spiritual retreat.
- People who are concerned about their mental health and want to bring balance to their life.
Design Stages
This is the visual representation of all the design stages that I covered as a part of this project. I admit this diagram looks so cliched in case studies but it’s very important to give a high-level representation of what processes were followed.
Domain Research
Understanding the market was very much needed when I started searching the internet. So I choose to ask the 5 Ws to help me understand why yoga and meditation are becoming popular and how it is affecting the market of wellness retreats.
- Who is the user and how this wellness retreat program has transformed their life?
- What does the recent trend show, Is the Yoga Industry growing?
- Where does India stand in the world for these kinds of wellness retreat programs to deal with a huge chunk of the population growth and concern about their mental health?
- When did this Yoga and Meditation become so popular?
- Why is Yoga Becoming So Popular?
Key findings of the domain research:
- The wellness industry is rapidly growing in India and as well as all over the globe. This sector is not limited to elite people or luxury brands. There is tremendous scope of Ayurveda and Yoga can become leading providers of this sector.
- People from all over the world choose India as the first choice destination to go for this type of program.
- With the recent pandemic and from the last couple of years people are more concerned about their mental health than physical health.
- At least, 32% of India is using their smartphones to plan and book their travel.
- The average hours of an Indian using a smartphone has increased from 3.9 hours in 2019 to 4.3 hours in march 2020, research and survey show.
In case you want to see the detailed domain research report, click here.
User Interviews
To get in-depth knowledge about the wellness retreat trends in India, I conducted surveys with people aged between 21–30 who love to travel and do yoga regularly or on an occasional basis. I choose 5 people who showed interest and said yes for a 1:1 interview. This was my first time conducting a research interview session so I tried to cover as much as possible about the 21st-century traveler.
In case you want to look for the detailed user interview plan, click here.
The interviews were conducted on video and audio call both as per the participant request and were fully recorded to have a better understanding of users' minds about the theme of the project in case I miss something.
In case you want to see the full interview guide, click here.
Key findings of the user interviews:
- Most of the participants want to explore new things as they look for new places & options.
- They want to short term courses first to have a basic understanding of what the wellness retreats are offering.
- The users were looking for affordable wellness retreats.
- Users want all kinds of wellness retreats to choose from according to the service they want like options in a categorized manner.
- The user is looking for wellness retreats near them but wants them in a secluded place.
- Users want retreats that provide extracurricular activities apart from yoga & meditation.
“I prefer a simple app with minimum clicks with a refreshing and warm feeling and it has to straight forward with no irrelevant information.”
“I have a very bad experience from my last trip as the review given on the app were all wrong due to which I hardly believe any reviews given on the app or website.”
“I think a normal vacation can not guarantee the relaxation of mind we are looking for as we know in our mind that again we have to follow the same life routine but going to a wellness retreat and participate in mind relaxing practiced will certainly bring a change it may be small but there will be some change which will help us live our life again in a more relaxed
manner.”— User quotes
Formulating the Problem Statement
This was one of the most important parts of designing which I have learned so far because it will help us to decide the foundation of our design.
How might we provide the users with all the information about the wellness retreat programs available in India through a single platform?
How might we redesign the way people spend vacations so that they can have a rejuvenating and relaxing experience?
How might we help the user to provide an application with a warm feeling with a seamless booking experience in the booking process and providing straightforward information?
Affinity map, Persona & Empathy map
Affinity Map
The first task after the interview was to decode all the important points from a traveler’s point of view so that a persona can be made.
I divided all points into three categories: 1. Pain Points 2. Motivations 3. Goals & Needs to sought the common points from all the participants to know the need of the user in a better way.
In case you want to see the detailed version of the interview notes used to make the affinity map, click here.
Persona
Till now, I pointed out some very important points from the user interview which helped me to understand the following stages in design.
“From all the interviews, I pointed out one very important point that the user believed that at some point in their life yoga & meditation has helped them to boost their confidence and helped them to balance their life.”
“This is Mrunal, 29 yr old man who thinks yoga & meditation has not
only helped him to achieve mental peace but also led him to better
life.”
Empathy map
The next step is to create an empathy map to know what a user thinks,
hears, feels, and does. It helps us to show a broader perspective of day to day life of a user.
User Flows
In my words, User flow is the path of which user is going to follow to accomplish his/her task. In my case, as it is a travel app so booking a wellness retreat was the task and it should be simple and familiar.
“My main goal was to provide straightforward information with seamless user experience with the help of engaging, visually appealing design with simple navigation features to complete the booking task.”
My first flow was very messy and long as I tried to put all the things that came to my mind. Here is the image and you can see how big it is for a simple booking flow:
After this I started thinking this is not going to help at all and users will be frustrated if it is going to be this long for a retreat booking process.
Then I shift my focus only on the main aspects of the booking process and finally, pieces started coming together and it looked like this.
I forgot to add the onboarding screens in the flow as they should also be included because the user will be landing on those screens first.
Here you can see the final user flow made for the booking process:
Sitemap
The next step after user flow is the planning and designing of the sitemap for the application. As the app is based on a travel platform so the contents will also be familiar to that.
As per my knowledge booking a wellness retreat is still a new subject for a user so I decided to make it similar as possible like a travel app. Here you can find the user stories used for creating the sitemap.
Here is the sitemap created with the help of user stories and user flow.
Sketches
The most important step after the following planning i.e. the sketches of the screens which will set the base of the design.
Here are the initial sketches made for the application:
I must say this is one of the important parts of the design before jumping on to your tool as here you will put your imagination into the paper which is going to set the base for your design.
In case you want to see all the paper sketches, click here.
Wireframing
Before starting this step I started exploring the play store on my smartphone and try to find some application that provides wellness retreat booking services but finds nothing. This was a task so I decided to go with some websites and try to convert the features provided into the mobile version.
But at last, I did find a couple of applications on the play store names Wellness Vibe, Auro Yoga, and Culture Trip. I also took some time and searched in some famous travel apps like Makemytrip. I referred to one website and one application for my designs i.e. Bookretreats.com & AuroYoga.
Based on the above finding, I finally designed some screens for my application which you can see below.
In case you want to see all the wireframes, click here.
Moodboard
I started saving images, design patterns, and color schemes whenever I saw something interested related to my theme of the project.
Brand Personality: Sukoon is a digital platform providing the best wellness retreat available across India to recharge, relax and rejuvenate one’s mind and body while enjoying the vacation to the fullest.
Brand Attributes: Simple, Easy to use, Caring, Adventurous, and exciting.
UI Kit
I used a lot of images, grey and blue color in my designs, and decided to continue with that as I wanted to use the minimum color in the best possible way to enhance my design.
Color psychology
Blue: Trust, stability, cool and relaxing.
Grey: Neutrality and balance. Helps in maintaining a cleaner look.
White: White shows cleanliness and humility.
Accessibility Audit
I also did the accessibility audit for some of my screens to see the color and contrast ratio. You can see the results below:
High-Fidelity Designs
Without wasting any time, let’s see the final designs of my screens.
In case you want to see all the high-fidelity screens, click here.
Usability Testing
Now it’s time for the final test of the product which will not just define the design constraints but will also help to fill the remaining gaps of the design and user needs.
I choose both remote and in-person usability testing for the 5 participants who love to travel and also yoga plays an important part in their life directly or indirectly. I conducted two rounds of testing in total.
Usability test plan
Before starting with my usability tests, I prepared a plan which you can see by clicking here.
Goal: The overall user experience by log-in in as a new user and booking a wellness retreat for a specific location.
In case you want to see the full usability test report, click here.
Final Prototype
The usability testing played a big part which helps me to make some design changes to my screen and also to add some pages which were important in the user's view.
In case you want to see the final prototype of the application after incorporating all the changes made in the design with the addition of new pages, click here.
Learnings
At last, I would like to share my learnings with you all as I did overcome a lot of challenges and whilst working on this project.
There are so many but I would like to share the most important ones with you:
- Learning 1: Before starting this case study, I had zero knowledge about the travel industry domain or the needs, pain-points of people looking to book wellness retreats online. But now when I look back, I can say I learned a lot about those aspects with the help of thorough research that I conducted.
- Learning 2: As a UX designer, I think the user is the one with whom we have to walk on the same path to understand his needs and goals of the project till the end. And I realized it the most in the Usability testing part. I assumed my designs were flawless until I showed them to the users and they pointed out some things which I never really thought of before.
Lastly, my destination for this project ends here but my design journey starts from here on, and as we all know
“A UX designer’s journey will never end because the design never ends. It grows with the thoughts and ideas of users with time and it will never stop asking for improvements and will ask for more work.”
I started being too philosophical again. I think I should stop writing now. 😄
Connect with me on LinkedIn for feedback & suggestions as they are highly appreciated.
